Share Status toolbar always disappears

[buttadee]

I feel kind of stupid asking this, but how does one get the Zimbra Connector toolbar, aka "Share Status," to always show in Outlook? I have Outlook 2007 on Win 7, using ZCO 6.0.4. I'm testing out 6.0.4 server/ZCO and everytime I restart Outlook, the Share Status toolbar is gone.

Thank you!
Brandi

[fsiegel]

You can right click on the blue area (the same way you would get the Zimbra Support tool bar) and check Zimbra Connector. Or Tools->Customize->Toolbars and check Zimbra Connector.

[fsiegel]

Note that the Share Status button is designed to show you new links (i.e. when a new share is created). Note that in future versions, we'll have better ZCO support for all this (bug 23879).

[buttadee]

Hi Frank,
I'm okay with how to make the toolbar appear in the first place (using either of the methods you mentioned), but what's strange to me is that it doesn't "stay." I have to enable the toolbar every time I launch Outlook, unlike the other toolbars available to me (such as Standard, Advanced, Web).

I know you mentioned a bug that's opened, so I am mentally treating this toolbar as a work in progress. But I had to post my question because I was afraid I was missing something obvious about how to keep the toolbar visible. In my testing, I have noticed the toolbar (already opened, of course) flash once I've accepted a share in ZWC, so that made me wonder what the point of the toolbar was if I had to think to enable it every time. In other words, the flashing feature is not going to grab anyone's attention if it's not already open. Until ZCO can have an accept button for a share in an email message, I don't see the toolbar as that useful. It's a little quirky in how it shows me my shares three times total. Once when I click on Share Status, and then one or two more times when I click OK.

Out of all the other things I know you have your hands in with ZCO, this toolbar is not as high a priority to me. Keep up the great work!

Thanks,
Brandi

[fsiegel]

Well, it was designed to alert the user when the status changed (i.e. when a link was created in ZWC). It's different than the other ones in this way -- that's why it's down on the bottom as opposed to being next to the other ones. Part of the problem was that there was no link created by ZCO, and that was really why it was developed. This should change when we finish 23879 (which is getting close). Perhaps then, we can change the behavior of this toolbar. Maybe we can even get rid of it, since there will be accept/decline. However, we may want to keep it -- if we can get to bug 36237, that could provide valuable information about the share.

If you have ideas on what you would like to see with this, and how you would like it to behave, I am willing to incorporate them.

[buttadee]

Okay, so since we're on this topic.... :-)

My ideal would be for ZCO to work as much like ZWC as possible with regards to shares. It appears that bug 23879 is addressing that quite a bit, at least from the ZCO sharer's perspective. So far, I have been thinking about it more from the ZCO sharee (invitee)'s perspective. It never bothered me as much to say to someone, "go use the web client if you want to do something 'special' like share out a folder or calendar," esp. since that was not going to be frequently done. (But having that ability will be welcomed.) Instead, it seemed more onerous to have to say, "Oh, someone shared something with you? Well, now you should launch the web client to accept it so it'll be there in your web view. And here in Outlook, you still have to go to File > Open > Other User's Mailbox, find the user, and then look for the shared item. And you'll have to do this again if you ever accidentally close that person's shared item."

So what I see as being most useful for ZCO functionality is to
(1.) have the ability to click "accept" when receiving an email about a share given to me, and have it automagically appear in the proper place (mail, calendar, contact list, etc.) and
(2.) a place to go to re-open a closed share (whether closed accidentally or not).

The "Share Status" toolbar COULD function as #2 there, but not the way it works currently. It currently relies on an action being taken in the web client first, and I see the future functionality of this toolbar being the way that a user can stay inside ZCO to handle all share-related tasks. E.g., the toolbar will know about share links created for you because you at some point had accepted the share. (From a technical perspective, would it matter whether you did the accepting from within ZCO or ZWC? Hopefully that's not something you have to keep track of, too.)

I see the toolbar as being a step above "Open Other user's Mailbox" because it allows the user to do a dumb query; e.g., "What the heck do I have available to me?" rather than having to specifically go and ask for shares from each of the four users who shared to him (including, maybe, an esoteric account or two that shared out company-wide calendars and aren't actual people).

Having the toolbar flash when a new link is created is not currently useful if the user has to know to make the toolbar visible first. Flashing is supposed to be attention-grabbing to tell you about new information. But you already know a new link has been created because you received a new email notification and went to open the toolbar so you can click the checkbox for the new share. And in the future, if there is an "accept" button in that notification email, I really won't need the flashing, because I will have taken care of it already.

And finally for my thoughts on this toolbar, the box that appears when I click "Share Status" probably only needs to appear once. Like other dialog boxes, if I click to make a change (check or uncheck a box) and then click OK, it should apply my change and close the box. I would then expect the change to have occurred and I'll see my added or removed share now. Having the box reappear identically is actually confusing because it is behaving more like I clicked an Apply button. If I don't see my share, I might click "Share Status" again just to double-check that I truly checked the box for the share I intended to, but if all's working well, I won't have to do that extra click anyway. (And if all is not working well, I should have received an error message....) There's probably no need to add an Apply button, though--I think it'd be simpler to just make the OK button apply-and-close. Right now I have to click "OK" to mean both "apply my change" and then it means "go ahead and close this window now" the 2nd time.

Thanks for your responsiveness and req. for input.
Brandi

[fsiegel]

23879 will take care of #1. We are working on that now. The Share Status toolbar is kind of like #2. Also, if there is a new link, it will flash whether or not you have the Zimbra Connector toolbar enabled. But it's true -- we can get rid of the flashing once we have the emails. The flashing is annoying. I could actually move this toolbar to the support bar, and it would be enabled with everything else. Then you could use it to get info on shares (especially once I fix 36237).